Re: Chest Pain

Posted By CCF CARDIO MD-APS on April 05, 1999 at 11:05:42:

In Reply to: Chest Pain posted by Aaron on April 02, 1999 at 17:10:34:






Occasionally (about once every other month) I will get a sharp pain in the left side of my chest that spreads into by upper back and shoulders (collar bone area).  When I get this pain it makes it so I cannot move at all or take a deep breath.  The deeper breath I take the greater the pain I feel.  I usually feel OK once I can sit up straight and take one large deep breath but I find this extremely difficult to do.  The pain usually lasts anywhere from a couple of minutes up to 1/2 hour.  I excercise daily and have never felt the pain during excercise, it usally occurs when I am sitting at work or home.  When the pain occurs I instantly break out in a sweat and find myself completly imobile, I honestly believe I am having a heart attack.  I have already had an EKG, Echo Cardio, stress test, and holtor monitor.  All test came back good. I am a competitve athlete and I'm not sure if this may be a muscular-skeletor problem rather than heart related.  Could you tell me what this might be and what further action I could take to define this condition.   Thank you very much for your input, it is greatly appreciated.




Dear Aaron,
As you may already have been told, it is highly unlikely that you have anything wrong with your heart and just as unlikely that anything will go wrong with your heart given the normal stress and other heart tests.
It does sound like a musculoskeletal type pain but it also could be GI related; the bet physician to help you sort this out is a general internist (who has GI, cardiac, and musculoskeletal training.)
I hope this information is useful. Information provided in the heart forum is for
general purposes only.  Only your physician can provided specific diagnoses and therapies.
Feel free to write back with further questions. Good luck!
If you would like to make an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center, please
call 1-800-CCF-CARE or inquire online by using the Heart Center website at
www.ccf.org/heartcenter. The Heart Center website contains a directory of the
cardiology staff that can be used to select the physician best suited to address your
cardiac problem.